Part 2

In the face of the bewildering pace of change and the social problems that we have created for

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ourselves in the 20 century, is there anything that stands firm, that endures, and from which we can learn? The most obvious answer is, yes, man himself. Over the centuries, man has not changed greatly, he has always had the same basic aspirations, has confronted the same problems; and has continued to ask the same question: How should one live? Social structures, such as the Church and State have always been quick to tell him the answer. Sometimes this has made him feel secure; sometimes it has placed him in shackles. Now, for the first time, he is thrown on his own resources, but still asks the question: How should one live?

It would be a brave man who would give a definitive answer. During my lifetime I have encountered many people and have discovered a wealth of attitudes and dispositions. Some have sought satisfaction through adventure, embarking on exciting, exhilarating, and even dangerous activities. Others have thrown themselves into the frenetic pursuit of a satisfying career - often to be caught in a meaningless rat-race dictated by others towards dubious ends. Still others have dedicated themselves to a cause, or to an ambition. Most have looked for a relationship of value. Many have simply been carried along by life without ever making firm decisions. I discovered that what might seem important to me may not be important to another, so I would hesitate before saying to anyone: This is how one should live.

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WHAT IS THERE THAT ENDURES? THE 8 AGES OF MAN THE SEARCH FOR HAPPINESS

To explore this, let me first look back on my own life. In the December 1991 issue of the Australian Bulletin magazine the subject of happiness was addressed. An article by psychiatrist Malcolm Dent discussed what he called “The Life Cycle and the Eight Ages of Man from infancy to the end of life”. I list these on the right.

When I look back, I recognise the Eight Ages, of which I am now in the last. I have known happiness and sadness in each of these stages. Perhaps “Happiness” is one of the unchanging qualities that all people desire, although the direct pursuit of it has rarely been successful, because we often mistake what will bring us happiness.

But the idea that we should seek happiness has a long history: The school of Utilitarians arose in the late eighteenth century with Jeremy Bentham who, defining his principle of utility, wrote of it as "that property in any object whereby it tends to produce pleasure, good or happiness, or to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil or unhappiness . . ."

Mankind, he said, was governed by two sovereign motives, pain and pleasure; and the principle of utility recognized this state of affairs. The object of all legislation must be the "greatest happiness of the greatest number."

The early stages of the eighth age when one seeks integration and wisdom, before infirmities set in, possibly to rob life of its enjoyment, may be the period of greatest happiness. In childhood, lack of mature experience prevents one from savouring the nature of happiness, hence joys are limited in their depth. The earlier stages of adult life still have uncertainty about them. There is a growing awareness of existential responsibility, and the angst that this creates.

But in the Eighth Age, when integration and understanding are at work, even the periods in the past that seemed times of gloom or suffering, slot themselves into the jig-saw puzzle that is life. They are part of the process that has made you become what you now are. They have imparted their own fragment of understanding of what life is about.

To know happiness, the reverse side of the coin must also have been experienced. So contentment and integration, to "have become the person one is capable of becoming," or to have accepted the shortfalls in this achievement, is finally the stuff of which deep happiness is made.

When I walked over to the Garden City shops one day, I overtook an old man when near the Melville City swimming pool. Many children were swimming, laughing and shouting. The old man had a small dog on a leash, and walked very hesitantly leaning heavily on a stick. He heard me coming up behind him, so stepped off the path for me. I said to him, "Isn't it lovely to hear the sound of the children enjoying themselves?"

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He paused, and then said with nostalgia, "Ah, those were the days." He may now be frail. He may have physical disabilities that take away from him the ability to participate fully in life, but he has within himself both his memories and his understanding. He is not just the old and infirm man. He is the infant, the toddler, the child, the adolescent, the young adult, the worker, the lover, the father, the grandfather, and now the old man in his Eighth Age. He is all these. Hopefully he can look back, integrate the whole, and say to himself that to have lived, is happiness.

But there is an aspect of happiness that disturbs me: This is the conflict between awareness - or the growth of consciousness - and happiness. We have all heard of the Greek philosopher, Socrates, who posed the question: Which would you rather be, a pig satisfied, or a man dissatisfied? Most say that they would opt for the man. We value awareness above an ignorant satisfaction. The growth of consciousness, of awareness, forces on us the responsibility to make decisions. This leads to another question: Can we be happy when others around us are unhappy?

A priest, who was one of the contributors to the series of "Bulletin" articles on Happiness, pointed out the obvious: happiness is related to human friendship and commitment. Happiness is related to love. Because human relationships are enduring, our grief is very painful when we lose one we love, or when one we love suffers. Our personal happiness is linked to the well-being of those to whom we are committed. It would be false to think we could increase our happiness by forsaking such commitments. Experience has shown us that knowing that we are loved and having the opportunity to love others is

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basic to our experience of contentment. No man can be, in John Donne's words, "entire unto himself." We have to relate to others not just for what they might do to satisfy our needs but also because human relationship gives us the opportunity to give to others and so become more complete. The priest said that happiness is about being at peace with oneself, with others, and with God.

It follows from this that my personal happiness is related to the happiness of those to whom I am committed. There is a corollary to this: As I expand my area of awareness, moving away from my "piglike" condition, so my association with others extends to all those around me. Can I be happy while there are people in this country living in poverty? While street kids take drugs and sleep on benches? While marriages break down and there is child abuse?

I can take this even further. Political history is a sorry story of man's inhumanity to man. Of killing and misery, of starvation and threat in other countries. Once I become aware of these, can I be happy? Does awareness bring with it responsibility? Do I choose to ignore this responsibility, blocking it out from my mind, thus reverting to the state of the satisfied pig? Or do I increase my awareness, and so become a man dissatisfied? And, if I become aware, should I be taking action to alleviate the unhappiness of others in this world? Is true happiness to be found through a sense of personal commitment to all others, so that one works for others whilst being fully aware of the unhappiness that abounds in this world?

I once met a university man who was brought to a state of complete inaction because, having recognised his fellowship and responsibility with all people in the world, felt completely inadequate to do anything. My attitude is that one must recognise personal limitations and not be crippled by the enormity of world problems. So one remains a man, dissatisfied at one level, while seeking to work with others within one’s human ability and limitations.

Perhaps we do not really seek after happiness, but rather a feeling of completeness and contentment within ourselves, living as best we can to achieve that, but accepting our human limitations.

⁷⁴ born in 1572 at London, died in 1631, John Donne was a leading English poet of the Metaphysical school and dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London (1621-31). Donne is often considered the greatest love poet in the English language.

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HAPPINESS, AWARENESS, COMPETENCE, COMPLETENESS THE GNOSTIC VIEW

One day early in 1992 Kay drew my attention to a quotation from John Buchan in one of the books that she was reading:

This seemed to me to strike at the heart of the matter. It is not happiness that we want, but a sense of competence and completeness within ourselves, so that we are at peace and at one with ourselves. To

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feel content is not, however, to be complacent. There is a kind of Yin and Yang in our attitude, an essential balance of opposites. We reach contentment by striving for that which is worthwhile while recognising and accepting the limitations that our humanity imposes on us.

In my own experience, we cannot feel complete in ourselves unless we have related deeply to something or someone outside ourselves. Such a feeling of completeness cannot be handed to us, it is the result of personal gnostic⁷⁶ experience. There is a sense in which many people today have a gnostic outlook, even though they neither acknowledge it, nor belong to an organised body. These are the people who say that true knowledge comes from within themselves, and is to be experienced, not thought out intellectually. They reject dogma and creed as human creations placed between knowledge and man. Someone who adheres to a dogma without a background of experienced knowledge, is blind to the truth. The dogma is simply a prop.

The gnostic says that truth cannot be communicated in its entirety but must be experienced. In this their attitude is like that of Taoism: "He who speaks does not know; he who knows does not speak." They say there is a wealth of difference between "belief" and "knowledge."

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Yin and Yang literally mean "dark side" and "sunny side" of a hill. They are mentioned for the first time in the Hsi tz'u, or "Appended Explanations" (c. 4th century BC), an appendix to the I Ching (Classic of Changes): "One [time] Yin, one [time] Yang, this is the Tao." Yin and Yang are two complementary, interdependent principles or phases alternating in space and time; they are emblems evoking the harmonious interplay of all pairs of opposites in the universe. First conceived by musicians, astronomers, or diviners and then propagated by a school that came to be named after them, Yin and Yang became the common stock of all Chinese philosophy.

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Gnosticism started as an early branch of the Christian church whose followers believed in a secret knowledge, a knowledge of the heart, not a knowledge of the intellect. They believed that to find true knowledge one should examine oneself and look deeply into oneself, and find there divinity. As the Christian church established and built a structure modelled on Roman lines, and adopted an Aristotelian line, it became important, for self preservation, to have a unity of belief and of doctrine. This was counter to the view of the Gnostics, in which every man was enjoined to find his own truth. Thus, Gnostics were regarded as heretics. I first came across Gnosticism in 1960 when I read the stimulating book, "History of Western Philosophy," by Bertrand Russell. My own attitude is that truth must be discovered for oneself rather than through paying obedience to an authoritarian set of doctrines. So I am nearer to the Gnostic outlook. The Gnostic outlook of finding truth within oneself also has something in common with Buddhism.

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Carl Jung caused an uproar when he made his now famous, but simple response to the question, "Do you believe in God?" Jung paused, and thought for a moment, as though it were difficult to frame the answer. Then he said, "I do not believe in God, I know." This attitude is one that rings true for me, and is consonant with my own feelings.

The Christian is worried by the place of evil in this world. He explains it by saying that a perfect God did not create evil, but that it is a consequence of man's Fall: it is a consequence of his sins. There is emphasis on atoning for one's sins, and on redemption. There is thus much emphasis on personal guilt. The gnostic takes a different view. He simply accepts life as it is, with its good and its evil. It is how man responds to this that matters. Few people today believe in Original Sin.

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As I have already written I have long considered that the aim of life is the seeking of unity with all things. Unity within oneself, unity with others, unity with nature, and eventually unity with God, whatever each of us may mean by that. Love is part of that expression of unity. Many years ago I wrote that sin is separation. Sin is that which separates man from himself, so that he is divided and troubled. Sin is separation from others, so there is no love; separation from nature, and separation from what we mean by God.

There is an affinity between the gnostic view, Taoism, and Buddhism. Or for that matter, the view of the existentialists. This must be so in basic religious experience, since it springs from the deep unconscious experiences of man, and these are probably the same, no matter the culture in which he finds himself. But, as soon as his aesthetic experiences are clothed in the thought-forms of his culture, they become distorted. The resultant intellectual creeds differ from one culture to another, but they all spring from similar primary aesthetic experience.

He who speaks does not know; He who knows does not speak.⁷⁸

sums it up beautifully.

In the early 1990s Caroline Jones conducted a series of radio interviews under the title The Search for Meaning. The primacy of a sense of unity arose time and again with different interviewees. After taking a walk with Kay in February 1991 during which we discussed an interview that we had heard that day, I made the following notes in my diary:

The person interviewed spoke of the unity, the continuity and yet the constant change in all things. She said: We tend to regard everything as separate, and yet this is false. It is only a convenience, fabricated by our minds so we can more easily cope with things. You and I may be sitting on the opposite sides of the table; we may regard each other as individuals, but we are connected. The air that I breathe out one moment is the air that you breathe in the next. Thus we are not physically separate. There are many other connections, such as the psychological, and perhaps many less understood relationships that mean we are not really separate at all but part of a single unity.

There is continuity, too, with our past and with our future, yet each moment is different from the next and from the last. We are faced with constant change and, if we are to live harmoniously, we must be at peace with both the continuity and the change.

⁷⁷ See pages 266-7

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Taoist Scripture: Lao-tzu - The Tao-Te-Ching, verse LXXXI

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UNITY & LOVE IN LIFE THE SEARCH FOR MEANING SUFFERING

One of the causes of personal suffering is our desire for repetition. Our desire to repeat something we had before. This is simply not possible. Our modern society tells us that Youth is the most desirable state, and we constantly strive to regain our youth. This makes us unhappy and we suffer, as we cannot repeat our youth. Youth, like old age, is part of the continuity of our existence. Our task is to live in harmony with each of the stages of our life, to acknowledge them as part of the whole, but not to regret a passing of any one stage. Old age brings its own benefits as well as its infirmities, and both are to be accepted as part of the way things are.

Some people suffer, and their lives take wrong directions because they reject their childhood. Some have had unhappy childhoods and they block these from their minds. You ask them to tell you about their childhood, and they say, "I can't remember anything about my childhood." Their childhood has been too painful to accept. Yet it is important to recognise the importance of the continuity of life and that your childhood, however painful, was part of it. If you cannot resolve this and come to terms with it, if you block it out, then you will suffer, and you will make errors in living your present life, with further suffering as a result.

Many people find it difficult to accept old age and death. Old age is as valuable as youth. There can be a serenity, and a degree of wisdom and understanding not possible in youth. Infirmities there may be, but we should not regret the loss of our powers. We should simply accept it as a natural part of living. In the same way we should accept death as part of living.

Just as there is both change and continuity in our lives, so there is change and continuity with those that came before us, and with those who will continue after us. We have continuity with our ancestors. We ourselves will be ancestors. We are all part of the totality of human life stretching both backwards and forwards in time.

Meaning comes into our life if we simply accept our place as one part in the changing pattern of life stretching through time.

In another program, Caroline Jones interviewed Stan Arneil. He said:

When you have been to the bottom of human experience through suffering, everything else is placed in its proper perspective.

I had never heard of Stan Arneil but, being impressed with what he said, I made the following notes in my diary:

Stan, as a very young soldier during the second world war, was captured by the Japanese and was a prisoner of war for three and a half years. The prisoners were starved, beaten and set to work on such tasks as the infamous Burma Railway construction. Men became sick and died. Cholera was one of the worst illnesses. Stan said that he came through this experience with a deep understanding of what was fundamentally important in life.

This was love for one's fellows. He sees society today as often deprived of love. Often there is no closeness between members of the family. Modern society keeps people apart. We may have material possessions but we have neglected to love one another. When he was a prisoner of war, everyone looked after everybody else. When you were down to basics, this was all you had. No one was neglected by others. If a mate could not walk, he was carried by others. If a man was dying, then at that time, all he wanted was love. All he wanted was people around him who cared about him. And everyone provided this.

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For Stan, compassion and love for one's fellow human beings has emerged as the one sustaining value in life. "If we could but love each other," he said, "there would be no wars." He spent his life trying to put into practice what he had come to understand.

Long ago I came to realise the central importance of love. Every religion will repeat this message, to love your neighbour. But how hard it is put this into practice. Individuals find it hard. Society, even harder, and we, and society become consumed with unimportant things - such as our possessions. I worry about our financial future. Will we have enough money when I have been retired for ten years? Stan said that such matters concern him very little. "When you have been to the bottom of human experience through suffering," he said, "everything else is placed in its proper context."

Stan said that he thought he had been a very privileged person to have experienced this suffering. He said, "It is only through suffering that you discover true values in life. I have discovered those values, so I am privileged."

I always remember the young Vietnamese student in the mid 1970s, who had gone through a bad emotional experience, saying to me "I think the only time I learn anything of value is when I suffer." He was right. It is personal pain, and the overcoming of it that teaches us fundamental truths.

A year later I read the book The Death of Forever by Darryl Reanney. I was impressed by his closing words:

I believe that what is missing in our lives is a sense of the sacred. By this I do not mean a return to religion in any formal sense. Religions like Christianity and Islam are, in my view, profaners of the sacred, denying in practice the very truths they profess in principle. . .

By a sense of the sacred I do not mean a new set of beliefs, which will inevitably harden into dogma. I mean an experiential sense of trust and caring, a renewed feeling for beauty in whatever form it may be found. . . We need a parable, not a textbook, a poem of reality so rich and beautiful that its meaning will transcend the words it uses. . .

The problems of this world. . . are a direct consequences of the me-first competitiveness of the ego-self. The only way to reverse planetary degradation is to break down the barriers that wall us off from each other and the world, to recognise that aphorisms like #The brotherhood of man' are not romantic, pie-in-the-sky daydreams but practical patents for survival. . .

To achieve this, I believe we need to introduce a cycle of rituals into life - not grandiose, self-important charades but participatory ceremonies that have their roots in human needs. . . When a group of people gathers to share a meal, they could, for a minute, link hands. Small though this gesture is, it is rich in significance: We all need that human contact because we all need to belong to something bigger than ourselves: something that remembers our past and affirms our future. We should create new rites of passage to celebrate the phases of the human life cycle, rituals for birth, for the transit into adolescence, and, above all, for dying. . .

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SUFFERING A SENSE OF THE SACRED CAN I KNOW WHAT LIFE IS ABOUT?

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George Bernard Shaw once quipped: Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children. How many of us, looking back to the mistakes and indiscretions of our own youth, have said ruefully: If only I knew then what I know now. But, of course, that is impossible. If, when we are young, a person in his eighth-age tells us of his experienced knowledge, we cannot use it. To us it is only intellectual knowledge: we hear it, but cannot apply it because, with our limited experience, we

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are not yet ready for it. As Robin Gray once said , an educator must wait for the teachable moment: that moment when the young person’s emotionally felt experience has prepared him to hear the intellectual knowledge, absorb it, and turn it into experienced knowledge of his own, and so learn.

In this sense I am quite unqualified to write usefully about how one should live. But there is another, deeper sense in which I am unqualified: I have lived a very privileged and restricted life. There is much of the real world that I have never experienced. I belong to a very small fraction of the world’s population: compared with most people in the world, I am an affluent and fortunate person. I was brought up in a largely trauma-free environment. I have never known poverty, hunger, want, unemployment, war, or the destructive forces of emotional conflict within my family. I had an advantaged education, going to private schools and completing a high level of tertiary education. Within my marriage I have not had conflict or pain. I have not suffered debilitating ill health. My life has been spent in university circles so that most of the people with whom I have associated have been highly educated and highly motivated. So what can I know about the problems of living faced by so many?

Shortly after my father returned home from three-and-a-half years of ill-treatment in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Java, I smugly said to him that I had never hated anyone. He replied: Then you have never been hurt enough. My trusting attitude to relations with other people has only been possible because of the privileged position I have had in life. Had my life been different, my whole attitude may have been different. If I had not been born into an affluent society where there was no struggle for physical survival, if I had not had a strongly supportive, loving family background, how would I have developed?

Some years ago I read an article in the daily paper about hard-core juvenile offenders. It described “John”, a seventeen-year-old repeat offender. He had attacked a boy of sixteen who was a stranger to him simply because he did not like the way the boy looked at him. He broke the boy’s kneecaps, his jaw and his ribs, and sat there, laughing at him. John came from a broken home; now, his parents were both dead and he had been moved from one unsympathetic foster home and institution to another. He had never known love.

If I had had John’s background, would I have behaved like him? Maybe I would. John had been emotionally crippled and damaged. Can he be repaired, or is he beyond repair? I cannot accept what he did, but neither can I accept the background conditions that perhaps led him to be like this. feel anguish for a boy like John, and say There, but for the Grace of God, go I.

In what follows I write about trusting people and believing the best of them. Would this be my attitude had I grown up in hostile circumstances and had my emotional growth stunted? The only possible attitude for me to take is one of humility and of thankfulness that life has treated me so well. I realise that the usefulness to others of my experience of life is consequently very limited.

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George Bernard Shaw was born in Dublin in 1856 and died in England in 1950. He was an Irish comic dramatist, literary critic, and Socialist propagandist, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925. Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), English novelist and critic gifted with an acute and far-ranging intelligence, once wrote: Experience is not what happens to you, it’s what you do with what happens to you. His works were notable for their elegance, wit, and pessimistic satire.

⁸⁰ See page 315

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This disclaimer aside, what guideposts have I seen and what have I learnt in my travel through life? Firstly, I have discovered that the aim of my life is to evolve, and secondly, to recognise and live by the principles of Yin and Yang.

The Aim of life

Put very simply, the aim of life is to live it well; to live it in a way appropriate to each of our eight ages so that eventually we can look back with pleasure and without regret in spite of the many vicissitudes we have encountered. The aim is not to achieve “success” as the attainment of wealth, favour, or eminence as judged by other people, but to gain that feeling of competence so well expressed in John Buchan’s novel: to experience “that splendid joy in your own powers and the approval of your own heart”.

The road of life is a very rocky one that continually climbs upward towards a summit. Initially, it is little more than a dusty track that twists and turns so that one can never quite see what lies ahead, and at first we look little further ahead than our feet. Sometimes it splits into two tracks and one cannot decide which to take, not realising that both will lead eventually to the summit.

Many a time, when I was sub-dean of Engineering or living in Currie Hall, a young student would trip on a rock and fall over, to lie prostrate on the ground, bloodied and bruised. Sometimes he would say, “Why has this got to happen to me - I always get the bad breaks”, or he would start blaming someone for his fall. Because I had travelled a little further along the road of life than had he, I could see that his proper action was not to feel sorry for himself or to blame others, but to scramble to his feet, dust himself down, face the direction that he was travelling and again set off along the path, saying to himself “In future, I must look out for rocks like that.” It was not always easy to persuade him. He was likely to retort: “But you are not the one that fell over.”

The response of blaming others and feeling sorry for ourselves is natural and appropriate for a certain stage of life: we have all done it. Hopefully, as we gain experience by tripping over enough rocks, we learn that such a response does not help us, and we discover not only how to avoid some of the rocks in our path but how not to experience either blame or self-pity.

As we travel along the road it slowly widens from a track to a path, and then to a well-defined thoroughfare. Not that we can always see very much more clearly where we are going, but we can look back down the hill and see from where we have come. The road gradually becomes crowded with more people, all travelling the same path. We react with them and learn from their experiences just as they learn from ours. Sometimes someone catches us just as we are about to trip, and steadies us. Another time we do that for someone else. Occasionally, someone may intentionally try to push us over. We form travelling companions and friendships and, maybe, special relationships where we travel, hand-in-hand, together. However, essentially, we are always alone.

In our eighth age, when we near the summit of the hill, we can look back, having learnt much on the way. Hopefully we have achieved that sense of competence and completeness that enables us to say: To have lived is happiness. That is success.

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THE AIM OF LIFE: EVOLVING AS A PERSON EVERYONE IS UNIQUE AND IRREPLACEABLE

If the aim of life is to evolve as a person, how is this to be achieved? As a young person, I had no idea. Indeed, the question did not even arise as I was too uncertain of myself to entertain such a notion. I now realise that it was not until I was in my mid-thirties, had taken part in an Apex Club and experienced working with people as Sub-Dean of my faculty, that I had reached a “teachable moment” in my life.

It was then that I came across the writings of Viktor Frankl. His quotation from Goethe had great emotional impact on me⁸¹:

If we take people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat them as though they were what they ought to be, we help them to become what they are capable of becoming.

The aspiration: To become the person one is capable of becoming, suddenly made sense to me. Here was a worthwhile purpose in life: To learn to understand myself. But how? Goethe provided me with the answer when he posed the question: How can we learn to know ourselves? And gave the answer:

Never by reflection, but by action. Try to do your duty and you will soon find out what you are. But what is your duty? The demands of each day.

I now realise that, when I was in Apex and when I was Sub-Dean, I simply threw myself into the task of working with people because it felt worthwhile. I did not ask myself “What’s in it for me?” I lost myself in the task that I was doing, not counting the cost. It was then that I grew as a person; it was then that I started to understand myself. Unwittingly my “investment” paid off a thousand fold. Perhaps I was simply doing my duty by responding to the demands of each day.

In 1994 I listened to a BBC radio program in which two women were interviewed about a book they had written. They were searching for their own sense of inner being and spirituality. As part of their search they interviewed many hundreds of women asking each of them about their own search for meaning. They discovered that everyone found contentment when they felt whole and complete, but what this meant was different for different people.

Finally they realised that finding oneself was not a matter of finding perfection. They likened people's wholeness to a garden: some had roses neatly planted, others had a vegetable patch wilderness. All that mattered was that you faced your reality, whatever it might be, and accepted it.

Coming to terms with yourself and not battling with yourself was the key to achieving a wholeness and a sense of spirituality.

This took my mind back to Viktor Frankl:

Each person is unique and irreplaceable. No one can replace him. If he has found his true place in the world and has filled it, he has

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thereby fulfilled himself .

⁸¹ See pages 268-269

⁸²The Feminine Face of God

⁸³ See pages 268 and 541

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The Yin and Yang of Life

Sometimes when we are young we set ourselves ambitious goals, seek perfection and then become despondent when we inevitably fail. In later life we usually learn to accept more realistic goals: We come to realise that we are frail human beings who will always make mistakes and that our achievements will lie somewhere between perfection and failure.

Most young people lack self-confidence. Being uncertain of themselves and of their untested abilities, some see success only in terms of perfection; anything short of this they judge as abject failure. So they refuse to face the challenge of life. When I was Sub-Dean I spoke with many students who had failed their exams. Quite often they said:

I failed my exams because I did not study. Had I given it my all,

and studied well, I would have passed.

This was the excuse they gave themselves: I would have passed, had I studied. In reality some feared failure from the outset and did not have the inner confidence to put themselves to the test. So they purposely - or perhaps unconsciously - did not study. Then when, inevitably, they failed, they had a face-saving excuse: I’m really OK, it’s just that I did not study. Behind all this they probably feared that they were “not OK” but did not have the courage to find out. What they had not yet discovered was that everyone is “OK”⁸⁴

The conflict between the desire for success and the fear of failure dogs us all. It is part of the Yin and Yang of life where we recognise many pairs of opposites. However, Yin and Yang are essentially emblems that evoke the harmonious interplay of all these pairs of opposites in our lives. The art of living is to balance these opposites harmoniously: The balance between desire for success and fear of failure is to live with a positive, hopeful optimism. This principle in Chinese philosophy finds an equivalent in the Western world with such mottoes as All things in moderation, and Nothing, too much as practical guidelines for living. This precept was espoused by the ancient Greeks, but rarely followed by the Romans⁸⁵

⁸⁴ During the second half of the 20th century many self-help books on personal development were published mostly based on humanistic psychology, a 20th-century movement that believes that man, as an individual, is a unique being and should be recognized and treated as such. The movement grew in opposition to the two mainstream 20th-century trends in psychology, behaviourism and psychoanalysis. Humanistic psychologists believe that behaviourists are over-concerned with the scientific study and analysis of the actions of man as an organism, to the neglect of basic aspects of man as a feeling, thinking individual. One influential therapy was the technique known as transactional analysis, developed by Eric Berne. As practiced by its founder, transactional analysis proved to be both a method of examining human interactions as well as a way of labeling and systematizing the information gained from observed transactions. The goal of this approach is to build a strong state of maturity by learning to recognize the "child" and "parent" aspects of personality in oneself and others. This work was popularised in a book by Thomas Harris: I’m OK - You’re OK. He postulated four basic types of relation between people typified by the statements: I’m not OK - You’re OK, I’m not OK - You’re not OK, I’m OK - You’re not OK, and I’m OK - You’re OK.

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The ancient Greeks practiced moderation in all things, but the Romans were known for their excesses. Ordinary citizens subsisted on barley or wheat porridge, fish, and ground pine nuts (edible pine seeds), but the Roman emperors and wealthy aristocrats gorged themselves on a staggering variety of foods. They staged lavish banquets where as many as 100 different kinds of fish were served, as well as mountainous quantities of beef, pork, veal, lamb, wild boar, venison, ostrich, duck, and peacock. They ordered ice and snow hauled down from the Alps to refrigerate their perishable foods, and they dispatched emissaries to outposts of the Roman Empire in search of exotic delicacies. (I couldn’t resist this irrelevant footnote!)

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THE YIN AND YANG OF LIFE THE MIDDLE PATH AND THE GOLDEN MEAN

Surely this maxim to live with moderation is something that has endured down the centuries. The Buddha proposed a "middle path" between self-indulgence and self-renunciation⁸⁶. In fact, it was not so much a path between these two extremes as one that drew together the benefits of both. Aristotle is also responsible for much later thinking about the virtues one should cultivate. He wrote of the Golden Mean, which is essentially the same idea as the Buddha's middle path. Two examples that he gave were:

# Courage - an example of the mean between two extremes: one can have a deficiency of it, which is cowardice, or one can have an excess of it, which is foolhardiness.

# The virtue of friendliness which, he said, was the mean between obsequiousness

exhibiting a fawning, subservient attentiveness -and surliness - showing an arrogant

lack of civility or graciousness.

At heart, we all recognise that the principle of Yin and Yang - of moderation in all things -is an important part of the art of living well. It has always been so but, while it is one thing to know it intellectually, it is another thing to know and practice it emotionally. Perhaps it first looms large when we reach our fourth age - the age of puberty - when both our passions and our idealism run high and when sometimes, incensed at the way things are, we become rebellious. This is also the age when we are uncertain of ourselves and may oscillate between extremes: one moment showing much trepidation, and another moment acting with daring and seeking adventure. Sometimes we are shy and hesitant to commit ourselves, another time we are brash and heedless of the consequences.

It is the age when almost all of us experience the problems of both extremes. It is often the age when we would like to “live it up and experiment - and hang the consequences” - even if this only remains a wishful thought in our imagination. Maybe it is a time in life when it is a danger to be too concerned about the consequences. Carl Jung once remarked that it is a pity to see in youth an over introspection, just as in old age it is a pity not to see it.

But how can we learn to choose a middle path in later life, if one has not explored the two extremes and discovered for oneself -or at least become emotionally aware of the extremes and their consequences by observing the actions of others and learning from them? There is an old saying that

Advice is what older people give young people when they can no longer set them a bad example.

There is in us, at all ages, an almost innate desire to live with complete freedom which our social conditioning inhibits but never quite destroys. We can all look back at our indiscretions and certainly do not condemn ourselves for them. Committing them was part of learning what life was about.

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In Buddhism, this middle path is known as the Noble Eightfold Path consisting of right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right mode of living, right endeavour, right mindfulness, and right concentration. It includes four Noble Truths which are that: [1] man's existence is full of conflict, dissatisfaction, sorrow, and suffering. [2] all this is caused by man's selfish desire--i.e., craving or "thirst." [3] there is emancipation, liberation, and freedom for human beings from all this, which is nirvana. [4] there is the Noble Eightfold Path, which is the way to this liberation. The Eightfold Path consists of:

(1)

right understanding--faith in the Buddhist view of the nature of existence in terms of the Four Noble Truths;

(2)

right thought--the resolve to practice the faith;

(3)

right speech--avoidance of falsehoods, slander, or abusive speech;

(4)

right action--abstention from taking life, stealing, and improper sexual behaviour;

(5)

right livelihood--rejection of occupations not in keeping with Buddhist principles;

(6)

right effort--avoidance of bad and development of good mental states;

(7)

right mindfulness--awareness of the body, feelings, and thought; and

(8)

right concentration--meditation.

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One important balance is that of enthusiasm. At one extreme we have apathy and indifference - where there is a lack of feeling, emotion, interest or concern in things, and at the other extreme there is fanaticism - where our excessive enthusiasm often leads to intense and uncritical devotion to a cause or action, while disregarding other considerations. The fanatic is convinced of his own belief and cannot be dissuaded from it, while the apathetic says that no belief or action is worthwhile.

With the principle of Yin and Yang we recognise the desirable balance between these two extremes as a tempered enthusiasm -a strong excitement of feeling that inspires zeal and action. When we have enthusiasm, we have an eagerness and an ardent, emotional interest in pursuing something, but we stop short of fanaticism. I believe that it is important to throw oneself into what we are doing with enthusiasm. It is through enthusiasm and commitment that positive actions occur, the best is achieved, and discoveries are made.

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I inherited the quality of enthusiasm from my mother’s side of the family where it abounded , and have always had much enthusiasm for those activities that interested me. Enthusiasm is contagious and one

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person’s enthusiasm can kindle it in another . However, while I believe that enthusiasm is a good quality, I have often been unable to keep it properly in balance. There have been times when I became too intense and poured my energies into what I was doing so that I neglected other things, or became physically unwell through over-stressing myself. Perhaps this is one lesson in my life that I know intellectually but have never been able to apply emotionally!

Much more important than enthusiasm is the task of gaining a realistic understanding of oneself. If a child has had encouragement and approval, then he is likely to develop his own inner approval and acceptance of himself. He will have a modest self-confidence. This is the healthy balanced position between two extremes. If he has grown up with little sense of self worth he may deprecate himself, disapprove of himself, and make little of himself; he could be self-effacing. At the other extreme he may become boastful and bragging, calling attention to himself and be arrogant in manner. To my mind such a person also has a low self-esteem: if it were otherwise, he would not have the need to boast or be arrogant.

If a young person has not been brought up with a modest self-confidence, he has the difficult task of discovering his own true self. If he is self-deprecating, he needs to discover that he is “OK”, and someone of unique value. If someone tells him that he is of value, he will hear the words intellectually but will not act on them emotionally until he experiences his “worthwhileness” for himself. On the other hand, if he is boastful and arrogant, he also needs to discover that he is “OK” and of unique value. With proper self-understanding there is no need to be arrogant.

Such people, only by forcing themselves to engage in life will, little by little, find their true worth. This may be a hard struggle. When young, I was self-deprecating but managed to gain understanding by forcing myself to act in spite of the fear of doing so:

If there was something that I knew I should do, but found the fear of action too great, I would invent a series of stepping stones. Each step was small enough to be faced, and each step, having been taken, made it difficult to go back.⁸⁹

⁸⁷ For example, my uncle Humfrey was wildly enthusiastic about his fishing (page 40) while my mother, aunty Phyl and uncles Eric and Leslie all showed the trait strongly.

⁸⁸ See comment by Peter Bartley on page 337

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Taken from page 227. See also pages 274 - 276

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EXAMPLES OF OBTAINING BALANCE AUTHORITY & FREEDOM GUIDEPOSTS TO LIVING

Lack of knowledge of ourselves often causes us to confuse our wants with our needs. If we do not have full understanding and acceptance of ourselves, we may unconsciously tell ourselves that we would “feel” all right if only we could satisfy our desire for material things, and for power. When we cannot feel the natural approval of others, we may develop a need to dominate them, so that they fear and “respect” us. Then we believe that in the eyes of the world - and so in our own eyes - we will be judged successful and have approval. But, when our large house becomes filled with coveted possessions; when we have our motor cars and yacht, our stocks and shares, and when we occupy a powerful position in society, we are still not satisfied, and want more.

Until we understand and accept ourselves, we will never be satisfied. Until we fulfill our basic physical needs - such as hunger, thirst, safety, shelter and love - we cannot satisfy our need for self-esteem . It is only when we attain true self-esteem that we discover that most of our wants for material possessions and our desire to dominate were false. Once we have a strong feeling of self-worth, while we may still own many material possessions, they are no longer needed in the hope of making us feel good about ourselves.

There is a very long list of opposites that we must balance in life. Amongst the most profound is our desire for freedom and lack of restraint, and our need for authority and discipline. Perhaps collectively we may point to democracy as the golden mean between these opposites, but there are many conflicts between freedom and authority in our individual lives. I once read a very thought provoking book by Paul Nash, Authority and Freedom in Education, in which he discussed many of the issues arising out of this conflict. For example, how do we reconcile the authority and conformity of the group with the freedom to be ourselves? Or the authority and restraint imposed on us by the need to work, as opposed to our desire to play? Then there is the authority of established tradition which may stifle our freedom to create for ourselves. How do we resolve the problem of the authority of commitment with our freedom to grow? These are all profound questions but ones that I cannot discuss here.

Guideposts to Living

As one walks down the road of life there are many guideposts. Sometimes our experiences along the track make us receptive to a particular one. We take its message on board and endeavour to live by it. If we find the message useful, it becomes part of our own way of life. Sometimes we are not ready: we see the message, read it, but cannot yet use it. Fortunately the guideposts are often repeated so that, if we cannot use one now, we may do so later. Many of the guideposts that I have noted on my journey through life have been discussed on previous pages. My purpose here is not to present a practical, do-it-yourself guide to living but simply to summarise the signs I have seen that have made sense to me, and perhaps to elaborate a few.

Ever since man lived in society he has developed codes of behaviour to regulate that society. Some included a rough form of justice, of which the best known is An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This appeared in ancient Babylonian society and was written in the code of Hammurabi around 1750 BC, but can be found in various forms in other societies. For example, among the Nandi of East Africa there was the proverb, A goat’s hide buys a goat’s hide, and a gourd, a gourd. The law of retribution was common and was the basis of much of our criminal justice to the end of the 18^th century when severe corporal punishment was still in use. Some people today still want vindictive retribution.

⁹⁰ See Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, page 265

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th

Written codes with a more humanitarian attitude did not appear until around the 7 century BC. The Christian commandment found in the New Testament to

Love thy neighbour as thyself

and the Golden Rule

In everything, do to others what you would have them do to you

simply gave a renewed divine authority to codes that had long been stated. Their basis is in The Book

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of the Covenant - one of the oldest collections of law in the Old Testament. They are also found in

th

the Law of Moses (about 5 century BC). The famed Ten Commandments are thought to be a legacy of Semitic tribal law when important commands were taught, one for each finger, so they could be more easily remembered.

From a limited cultural perspective, we are apt to think of these precepts as peculiarly Christian or Jewish, but this is not so. The ideas can be found in many places and cultures. For instance, the Hindu Mahabharata, written around 500 BC, was a brief narrative poem but grew eventually to “the greatest work of imagination that Asia has produced”. It contains the following:

Do naught to others which if done to thee would

cause thee pain and

Even if the enemy seeks help, the good man will be

ready to grant him aid⁹²

They are also found in early Greek writing, while Confucius (551-479 BC) defined the process of becoming human as being able to “conquer yourself.. .” He is said to have freed himself of “opinionatedness, dogmatism, obstinacy and egoism” He believed that he should be loyal to himself and considerate of others. His “Golden Rule” was stated in the negative: “Do not do unto others what you would not want others to do unto you”. He also said:

A man of humanity, wishing to establish himself,

also establishes others, and wishing to enlarge

himself, also enlarges others.

The Analects of Confucius describe his notion of the character of the Higher Man, which is an overflowing sympathy towards all men:

He is not angered by the excellence of other men; when he sees men of worth he thinks of equalling them; when he sees men of low worth he turns inward and examines himself; for there are few faults that we do not share with our neighbours. He pays no attention to slander or violent speech. He is courteous and affable to all, but does not gush forth indiscriminate praise. He treats his inferiors without

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contempt, and his superiors without seeking to court their favour .

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In Exodus 20:22-23:33. It is similar to the code of Hammurabi, and also contain the “eye for an eye...” law.

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These extracts were quoted by Will Durant, The Story of Civilization, Part I, Our Oriental Heritage, 1935, page 564

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Durant, page 670

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THE GOLDEN RULE LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR AS THYSELF KNOW THYSELF

While, within Jewish history and later in the Christian Church, it was doubtless convenient for the State and for the Priesthood to have divine sanction for the laws they wished to promulgate for the good and for the control of their society, I regard these statements simply as an expression of the accumulated wisdom of humankind on how to live at peace and harmony with oneself and with others. We have never improved upon them. They neither need nor require the stamp of divine authority as they have the authority of common human experience.

Of course they are idealistic and impractical but, like the bull’s eye of a target they are something to be aimed for, even if we have little hope of attaining them. They are nonetheless the best admonitions ever given because those who sincerely try to emulate them find fulfilment. In the recorded history of humankind, these precepts have endured, unchanged, just as has our inability to meet the challenge they throw down to us.

Love thy Neighbour As Thyself

We have all heard this phrase a thousand times. My experience is that one cannot love one’s neighbour unless one first loves oneself. But what does it mean to Love oneself? Obviously we do not mean it in the sense of the phrase: He loves himself too much. We have all come across people who appear to love themselves too much. They are narcissistic: arrogant, self-centred, self-important, full of their own opinions, conceited with an excessive appreciation of their own worth. They often put others

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down. Such people have not yet reached understanding of themselves .

No, to love oneself truly is to know, value and accept oneself. So, to love oneself is to have achieved

th

the Socratic injunction to Know Thyself. This springs right back to Protagorus in the 5 century BC who first gave the admonition to Know Thyself, and said that Man is the measure of all things something very dear to present day humanists in the face of the dehumanising effects of large scale organisation in modern society.

How do we come to know ourselves? How do we come to understand ourselves? This is ground we have covered already: By tending to the demands of each day and by being an active participant with

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others in the act of living . It is then that we are modest about ourselves without show of conceit or vanity; it is then that we respect ourselves for what we are; it is then that we value ourselves and can show humility: There is no need for assertive arrogance because we do not have to prove ourselves to anyone as, in modern terms, we know that we are OK.

Confucius said : A man of humanity, wishing to establish himself, also establishes others, and wishing to enlarge himself, also enlarges others. I have found this to be true. There is a kind of reciprocity of benefit in our relation with others. I have said that one cannot love one’s neighbour unless one first loves oneself. But one learns to understand and love oneself only through interaction with others. There is a kind of mutual “pulling oneself up by one’s own bootstraps” as little by little we grow when we help others grow.

⁹⁴ See page 620 ⁹⁵ See pages 617 and 611

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As I slowly developed as a person, I noted a few other guideposts. Unfortunately I could not always heed them when I first saw them, and it took time for me to change old habits and discover that their messages really worked. Some of the more useful were:

Be gentle on yourself and on others

One of the very important truths I eventually learnt was that, because we are human beings, we are all frail and imperfect. If we hold ideals and values before us, as a shining light to guide us then, from time to time, we will fail to live up to them. Sometimes we will misjudge ourselves and fail to achieve an ambition. We must not condemn ourselves or judge ourselves badly when we fail.

The moral that I learnt was not to be too hard on myself, and not to take myself too seriously. Sometimes, when I did something particularly stupid, I stood back and looked at silly little John Fall strutting about on the stage of life and, in my mind, took him down a peg or two. I did not judge him or condemn him: I accepted him for what he was: neither saint nor devil, neither genius nor dunderhead, but simply human. I now know that it is important to be able to laugh at oneself, to recognise one’s weaknesses and to forgive oneself, and to learn what is realistic for us, while still striving for a life of higher quality. I discovered that, as my acceptance of myself grew, then so did my self-esteem and self-confidence. This led me to accept other people as I found them.

I learnt that, while I could condemn someone's bad actions - including my own, I never needed to condemn the person themselves. I found that many people cannot separate a person from their actions. If their actions are bad, then the person is bad. Eventually I learnt to make the distinction: the action might be bad, but I could never know the circumstances that led to that action, so I could not judge the person themselves. Sometimes those circumstances forced them to act in ways that were inappropriate. My proper course of action was to do what I could to help them (or myself) change the circumstances, so they might discover for themselves a more satisfactory approach to life.

My daughter Judith once remarked that she was brought up in a household where her parents were not judgmental of others; she thought that everyone was like this and only discovered in later life that most people were very judgmental of others.

It is very easy for us to judge others on superficial grounds - simply because they seem different. Maybe their skin is a different colour to ours, or they speak with a different accent, or come from a different country or social group. Maybe they hold somewhat different values to our own. Sometimes we reject someone because we don’t know how to handle the situation: they may be blind or have an

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affliction. A friend once told me that a few years ago she suffered from Bell's Palsy caused by a nerve problem in the neck. This paralysed one side of her face and it took about three months for her to recover. During this period her face remained paralysed and her speech slurred. She recalled the incident:

People treated me like an imbecile. They spoke to my daughter and husband but would not speak to me; nor would they look at me. But I had a perfectly functioning brain! It was just that I looked peculiar and spoke strangely. It showed me how people react to anyone who does not look normal. Nowadays, If I see a disabled or partly paralysed person, I go out of my way to speak to them and treat them as though they were perfectly normal, because I know how they must feel when people shy away from them.

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Bell's palsy is the most common lesion of the facial nerve. An abrupt weakness of all the facial muscles on one side, it is often accompanied by pain around the ear, unusual loudness of sounds heard in the ear on the same side, and loss of taste on the front of the tongue. Many patients believe that they have had a stroke, a conclusion corrected when it is seen that they cannot close the eye on the affected side.

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BE GENTLE ON YOURSELF BE NON-JUDGMENTAL RESPECT & VALUE YOURSELF

Respect and value yourself and others

It is very easy to judge ourselves badly when we see what we imagine are our shortcomings. Often we react to what we believe are other people’s expectations of us, and find ourselves wanting. I was always sensitive to what I thought other people thought about me, not realising that their main concern was

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what I thought about them! What we forget is that everyone slowly evolves as a person . When we are young we do not know ourselves well enough not to make mistakes: mistakes are our learning

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experiences and may involve some pain and suffering . People can tell us this a thousand times but it takes time for us to realise that we are unique; that no one has the same background, the same restraints or the same opportunities as we, and that we occupy a significant place in the scheme of things.

Sometimes we do not gain respect for ourselves until we see that we are valued by others. If we are fortunate, we are truly loved by our parents for our own selves - and this gives us a head start. Very often it is only by relating to others and living and working alongside them that we learn the value of sincere friendship: when others see us as worthwhile, we see ourselves as worthwhile. When we attain some small positive achievement, it strengthens our feeling of being worthwhile. We start to gain respect for ourselves.

When we feel good about ourselves we can open ourselves to experience, and grow. No longer do we need to be timid like a snail and crawl into our little shell where we feel safe. Unless we venture out and explore, valuable learning experiences will be denied us. Nor do we need to be aggressive and “tough”, giving the attitude that we don’t care about anyone because they don’t care about us: we do not need to be like the porcupine who sticks out his sharp quills to protect himself from anyone coming too close, saying “if you come too close, you will get hurt.” Unless we can allow others to come close to us, we will remain stunted in our growth.

Just as we need to gather courage to extend ourselves and allow others to come close to us, so others have the same need: they need to extend themselves and come close to people like us. And this is where we meet the Golden Rule.

The Golden Rule

It is often said that what comes first is self-interest: the “me-first” philosophy. There is some truth in this, as it is difficult not to consider one’s own interests. However, I do not believe in altruism - having an unselfish regard for or devotion to the welfare of others without any concern for oneself - because when someone works for the welfare of another they invariably grow as a person, and this growth is in

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their own self-interest .

Because my growth towards becoming an authentic person and so discovering and becoming my true self, can only happen through my relations with others; and because the same can only happen for them by relating to me or someone else, the Golden Rule: Do to others what you would have them do to you makes profound common sense. It only fails to make sense when we misinterpret the aim of life, To live life well, as meaning acquiring fame and fortune in the eyes of the world. Many people acquire fame and fortune by disregarding others, but do not achieve a sense of fulfilment.

⁹⁷ See the comment at the foot of page 462

⁹⁸ See comments on pages 513 and 614

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I was groping toward an emotional realisation of this, rather than an intellectual realisation when I was in my mid-thirties. My experience then taught me not to harm another or myself, and always to act for the greatest good of another - and for myself (see pages 253 & 270)

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Of course there are many examples of disregard for others in society. We come across them every day from the lowest to the highest level. ´Twas ever so, particularly when the actions are anonymous. For example, people show a lack of concern when they create litter: Currie Hall students were forever littering the place, showing little concern for others; people throw bottles out of cars or smash bottles, unmindful of the danger of broken glass to children; unthinking vandalism and graffiti are widespread. Kay has borrowed magazines from the public library only to discover that a previous reader had torn out recipes without regard for future readers. In recent years there have been many examples of ravaging bush fires lit by unthinking arsonists. Acts of dishonesty abound: there is ample evidence of fraud and corruption among business people, among the police or in the political arena where power

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and influence exists; Barwick has suggested that there is more tax fraud among the ordinary population than in big business. This list could go on and on. There has always been a segment of the community that has mistaken the path to self-development, who have the “me-first” philosophy, and whose greatest principle is that anything goes, provided one does not get caught.

It is a mistake to interpret living life well as acquiring material possessions, fame and fortune in the eyes of others. In 1992 I watched a television program titled: A poor man shames us all, meaning that if we see a poor man, he should not be despised for being poor, but we should be ashamed that we and our society allow such a man to be. The program looked at American society with its emphasis on material possessions, and the never ending list of ‘wants’, not ‘needs’, created by the advertising industry. It drew attention to the impersonal level of our lives in which things become more important than people. Material possessions were more valued than personal relationships, and yet, we all needed those personal relationships.

A garbage collector was interviewed who said that he was amazed at the things that people throw out as worthless. He did not possess material wealth, but he possessed all that mattered: He was happily married and he had happy children who depended on him. His sense of value in life, and of self-worth came from the dependence of others on him and on his ability to supply his family with love and with their needs. He said that he was rich.

The program compared American society with that of the Gabra tribe in Kenya who measured their wealth by gifts of love. A stranger, who had fallen on bad times and had lost all his camels, came to their village. He asked the village to give him a camel from their herd. This, they did. In a simple, practical sense, the village had a system of personal indebtedness: I do something for you and this makes you indebted to me. You do something for me, and I become indebted to you. This creates a bond of fellowship between members. The Gabra tribe depended on an intricate set of mutual indebtedness, including that to ancestors: We are indebted to them because they produced us and gave us life. We repay that indebtedness by giving them respect. When we give, we become rich. The tribe weaved song and dance, ceremony and ritual into their everyday life and this contributed to their sense of belonging and of community.

This was in great contrast to the stark individualism of much Western society with its large organisation and impersonality, with its banks, credit cards and false imagery, feeding on capitalistic greed. Perhaps it is simply a consequence of moving from a small society to a large society which, because it is impersonal and anonymous, enables false values to thrive. To borrow from a book published in

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1974, perhaps we should remember that Small is Beautiful .

¹⁰⁰ See also comment on page 589

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E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered

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PROBLEMS OF ANONYMITY LIVING LIFE WELL? SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL MORE GUIDEPOSTS

In 1959 I bought a book published by UNESCO: All Men are Brothers: Life and Thoughts of Mahatma

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Gandhi as told in his own words . Gandhi wrote:

The end to be sought is human happiness combined with full mental and moral growth. I use the adjective moral as synonymous with spiritual. This end can be achieved under decentralization. Centralization as a system is inconsistent with a

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non-violent structure of society .

We should be ashamed of resting or having a square meal so long as there is one able-bodied man or woman without work or food¹⁰⁴

Perhaps Gandhi and Shumacher are right: Small is beautiful; large is dangerous because it enables our basic humanity and our important ends to be forgotten. When important ends are forgotten, we forget the Golden Rule. Because we do not know our neighbour, our community values are weakened.

Even in our everyday activities it is difficult to live by the Golden Rule because we do not see that our attempt to do so enlarges us. However, I have noted these minor guideposts along the way:

# Treat everyone with genuine respect, no matter who they are, whatever their circumstances or actions

# Everyone is my equal no matter what their age, status or

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circumstance: treat them that way .

# Never belittle someone, bully them or put them down. This is destructive.

# As already stated, make a clear distinction between condemning the action and condemning the person. Be ready to forgive.

If we could but follow these precepts, we would be well on the way to applying the Golden Rule in our lives.

¹⁰² This work was published in 1958 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation. Gandhi was born in India in 1869, led a life of self-renunciation and nonviolence and became of huge political influence in India. He was shot dead by a young Hindu Fanatic in January 1948. Gilbert Murray prophetically wrote about Gandhi in 1918, warning that people and governments "should be very careful how they deal with a man who cares nothing for sensual pleasure, nothing for riches, nothing for comfort or praise, or promotion, but is simply determined to do what he believes to be right. He is a dangerous and uncomfortable enemy, because his body which you can always conquer gives you so little purchase upon his soul." The book All Men are Brothers is filled with wisdom.

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All Men are Brothers, page 124

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Ibid. page 133

¹⁰⁵ On page 248 I noted that, after I had been in the Sub-Dean’s position for a year, I decided that every student would have my respect and would be treated as an individual, and in a personal, non-bureaucratic way.

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Adopt a positive, enthusiastic approach to life

Because enthusiasm comes to me naturally, it was generally easy for me to read and apply the message of this guidepost, and yet there were times when I could not. As a late teenager I had several dark periods when, in very depressed mood, I felt that nothing was worthwhile. My enthusiasm was shut

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down and there seemed no way of getting out of the mood. Basically I was very lonely and it was only when I made a good friendship that I slowly came out of my black state. I have known many young people who have become discouraged, either through failure to make friends or through failing to reach an objective they set themselves. Sometimes, part of the problem was that they had unrealistic expectations of themselves because they did not yet understand themselves sufficiently.

Viktor Frankl pointed out that it is not what happens to you that counts, but the attitude you adopt to

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what happens to you . However, when you feel depressed, it is very difficult to adopt a positive attitude. Most times this feeling is not so much depression as pessimism: we judge our situation hopeless; emotionally we emphasise all the most adverse aspects and anticipate the worst possible outcomes. Very occasionally a depression is severe and professional help is required, but usually it is short lived, and circumstances change. Gradually we put a more favorable construction upon events.

Since that black period in my life I have rarely been depressed: with increased relationships and activities I forgot to think about myself. I started with a negative self-image, threw myself into life and then discovered one day that I had a positive self-image. I learnt to be optimistic, and to anticipate the best possible outcomes in life, but found that I had become realistic: I aimed for the best outcomes because that gave me incentive, but accepted the inevitable shortfalls. Enthusiasm returned to me and a positive outlook on life emerged.

Be optimistic, but realistic

An old friend once said to me:

I'm 88 next year. Not this year, next year. I'm only 86 now, I turn 87 this year. You must always keep a positive outlook on life. I've just planted some shrubs that will not flower for three years, so I must be around for that. And just before they flower I will plant some more that will take three years to flower. It's important to live for a purpose; if you've got no purpose to live for tomorrow, then you have no purpose to live for today and you might as well die.

Optimism is a far more useful quality than pessimism. Some people seem to thrive on being pessimistic. They anticipate that things will work out badly. They then approach their activity in such a manner as to ensure their predicted outcome. The realistic optimist approaches every task from a positive, enthusiastic point of view, so that he gives himself the best possible chance of success. It is not surprising that he is often more successful than the habitual pessimist.

¹⁰⁶ See page 93

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See page 267. Also see footnote 79 page 615 for the comment by Aldous Huxley about

experience

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BE POSITIVE, OPTIMISTIC, ENTHUSIASTIC DEVELOP A SENSE OF WONDER & CURIOSITY

Encourage a sense of wonder, curiosity and interest in everything around you

How wonderful if you can retain throughout your whole life a sense of wonder and excitement for the world around you - particularly if, as an adult, your senses have not been completely dulled and you start putting your experiences into perspective. Small children have this wonder and excitement. Initially, all experiences are new and simply exciting. Just look at the joy on a young child’s face as it discovers something new about nature. Perhaps it develops the capacity to dream and to wonder.

And then, when the child goes to school and becomes constrained and “socialised”, how often does it lose that excitement of being part of a wonderful world. Perhaps the pre-school youngster simply looks at the sky and the hills and hears the song of the birds with unfiltered senses: it is a pure, aesthetic experience.

Then people start limiting and structuring its experience: That bird is a magpie, this one, a kookaburra. The little child no longer hears them with the same delight: they become part of his intellectual, artificially constructed interpretation of nature, and something is both gained and lost. Most of us forget the unfiltered joy that we first experienced in nature, but something of it trickles back to us when we walk in bare feet along the ocean shore and watch and listen to the breaking of the waves. Standing on a mountain top, many of us momentarily recapture that sense of beauty and awe.

Perhaps this loss is inevitable as we gradually learn how to cope with the complexity of our man-made world. Nonetheless, we are fortunate if we can retain a sense of curiosity and start asking: Why is it so? Why are the clouds sometimes white and sometimes black? Where does the rain come from? Why is the sky blue? Where do I go when I am asleep? Why am I sometimes sad? Why do I feel that a butterfly is beautiful? What a wonderful curiosity this is, even though it belongs to the intellectual world.

I remember how, when I was eight, my parents bought the ten-volume set of Arthur Mee’s Children’s

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Encyclopedia . Within it there were many sections headed “Wonder” in which these and other questions were asked, and simple, but thought-provoking, answers given. This strengthened my curiosity whether I read about the nature of stars, the domestic life of ants, or the crystal structure of common salt. The world became a wonderful, exciting place with so much to discover.

And so it is: the world is a wonderful and exciting place for people of any age. What can be more exciting than to experience, to explore, to wonder, to learn and understand, and so to appreciate the world in which we live? It matters not whether we experience the joy of walking in the countryside, tramping through the bush, searching for new flowers, plants, birds or insects, or whether we ponder on the slow development of man, his skills and struggles through the ages, or whether we immerse ourselves in the written thoughts of other people. It matters not whether we are captured by the beauty of music or the skill of the painter. It is enough that we are enthralled, held spellbound, and propelled with the desire to learn and appreciate the world that is ours.

All these are part of the excitement of being alive: the fully alive person lives with a constant sense of wonder and excitement for the riches that life offers, if only he opens the door to them. I believe that we should always encourage in ourselves that sense of curiosity and wonder that can enrich our lives and teach us that, rather than being the centre of things, we are but a small fragment of life, contributing to the greatness that is Life.

¹⁰⁸ See page 32

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When you do something Throw yourself into the task

This guidepost on the road of life has two subsidiary messages written underneath. They are:

[1] Don’t count the cost to yourself

[2] If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

I can smile now at the second of these. It’s one of those old cliches that are jokingly referred to as the typical admonition of one’s school teacher: To the reluctant little Tommy the school teacher says, ‘Now look, Tommy, if a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’ To which Tommy responds, ‘Yes, teacher’, with resignation but no commitment. Tommy has heard the advice, but is not convinced. He would much rather play and have fun than put in the hard work to do the job well - in any case, he is not convinced that he can do it well. He is a little like that university student who said, ‘I would have passed, had I really tried,’ but who, deep down, doubts it.

I discovered that there are tremendous rewards to be had by throwing oneself into a task without counting the cost to oneself. There are two problems with counting the cost before you commit yourself to the task:

First, you may think that you know the cost, but perhaps you are mistaken. Also, you are unlikely to estimate accurately the rewards and benefits that flow from doing the job well - because often those rewards are unexpected and not realised until the job is done.

Second, if you always count the cost to yourself, you tend to adopt the attitude: ‘I won’t do it unless there is something in it for me.’ That is the narrow and limited “me-first” attitude. With that attitude you never escape from being self-centred and so fail to achieve the personal growth that commitment can bring. This is akin to the attitude of the economic rationalists who say that the only thing that matters is the bottom line: The dollar return to me.

Just down the road from the above guideposts there is another that simply says:

Explore and Discover Your talents.

Everyone has a multitude of talents. To develop and enjoy our talents, we don’t have to come out on top, or prove ourselves better than others. We only have to discover where our natural abilities lie, and then work on them so that we have the immense personal, inner satisfaction of seeing those talents develop. We may have the talent of being a good runner, or player of football or tennis; we may have a talent for music; we may be good with our hands and enjoy the creative act of building a bookcase, shaping a piece of pottery, tinkering knowledgeably with the engine of our car, knitting a garment, or developing a garden. We may have the latent talent of being a good and understanding listener to others: perhaps our gift is that we can form reliable friendships of value to others and ourselves. There are as many possible talents as there are human activities, and in some of these we can excel to our own satisfaction.

At first we do not know where our talents lie. Unless we explore those activities that capture our initial interest, and then give them all we have got, we will remain without the rewards, and without the knowledge of ourselves that could be ours. When I was at school I could not draw well compared with other students, and told myself I was no good at drawing. Years later I turned my hand to oil

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DO THINGS WELL DON’T COUNT THE COST DON’T GIVE UP TOO EASILY

painting¹⁰⁹ and, although I could not produce a masterpiece by other people’s standards, I gained much personal satisfaction from discovering what I could do. In the act of trying, and of accomplishing a satisfying result to my own standards, a part of me grew in stature. This is what personal discovery of talent is about: about achieving inner satisfaction and personal growth; it is not about proving oneself better than someone else, becoming the best, or engaging in fierce competition with others. Those are false values.

Sometimes we believe we have a talent only to discover that it does not develop, and gives us no final satisfaction. So we give it up and turn to something else. Our effort was not, however, wasted, so we should not feel frustrated at our failure. The only way we learn where our talents lie, and who we are, is by experimenting, by trying ourselves out. Some of our efforts are bound to fall short of our expectations but, in the process, we have come to know ourselves better. Sometimes we have a latent talent but try to develop it before we are ready for it. At a later stage, when we are ready, that talent may prove our greatest asset by giving us immense personal growth and satisfaction.

This can happen with a career change. When we are young we may set out on a career path only to discover in later life that a different path would give us more satisfaction: so we make the change. This happened to me. When I was young, I was too shy, sensitive and insecure to relate to people, so I threw myself into a career that did not directly involve other people. I had some talent for abstract thought and imagination, so I became an academic engineer. I greatly enjoyed this work but, as I developed, I became interested in the social implications of engineering and then, when I had discovered more of myself, changed career to one that had intense involvement with other people -a career that gave me immense satisfaction - but not one that I could have tackled when I was younger. Most of us make changes as we develop. In the “Eight Ages of Man” listed on page 609, a possible career change is shown at the 7^th age, but it can occur much earlier.

When one is discovering one’s talents, there is another guidepost on the roadside that says:

Don’t give up too easily Everything worthwhile takes effort.

I remember my father several times quoting the phrase:

Nothing for Nothing And very little for sixpence

Nothing worthwhile is achieved without effort. Everything costs you something. During the last year I bought a scanner so that I could scan photographs and include images in this autobiography. I paid $1,100 for it, but noted that I could have bought a different scanner for as little as $250.

‘What is the difference?’, I asked the salesman. He gave the well-known reply: ‘You pay for what you get.’ It is so in most things: If you want quality, it costs. It is the same in one’s life: If you want quality in your achievement, then it does not come cheaply - you must be prepared to put in the effort needed, and not give up the first time it becomes hard.

¹⁰⁹ See the two examples: page 11: The Firs at Long Buckby, and page 385, Leighton

Cottage.

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I hadn’t gone very far beyond the last guidepost when I saw another:

If you want real freedom you must submit to the authority of discipline

A majestic river of great beauty flows to the sea and gives both pleasure to those who see it, sustenance to those whose crops depend on it and successful commerce to those who navigate it. But it only achieves these worthwhile ends because it is constrained - because it has banks. Without those banks, the river would spread over the countryside and become an amorphous, shapeless, dank swamp of no use to anyone.

I remember saying to the concert pianist André Tchaikowsky that I wished that I could play as he did, and received the reply: ‘And so you could, John, if you were prepared to practice at least five hours a day for seven days a week for many years.’ Because he submitted to the authority of self-discipline,

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André had the freedom to create at the keyboard what I could not . It was the same with my friend Alistair Macfarlane who mastered his craft of theoretical dynamics through patient practice of honing

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his skills . And so it is with everything: the carpenter gains his skill at making a precise dove-tail joint through constant effort and practice. The same with the first-rate tennis player, the accountant, the medical doctor, or with anyone who has acquired mastery of skills and developed his talent.

Effort and mastery set us free. Depending on our attitude, the disciplined effort may seem a drudgery, or, as we slowly make progress, we may experience the exhilaration of the mastery of one component skill after another. If we paddle up a river in a tropical jungle, we discover something new every time we turn a corner. We do not count the effort of paddling, because we see our achievement. When we negotiate a difficult and demanding set of rapids successfully, we feel not only exhilaration but joy and happiness at that achievement.

So, if we wish to master a skill, we should adopt a positive attitude towards the effort required and rejoice every time we make progress. If the progress, however, eludes us, no matter how hard we try, we should be prepared to change to some other endeavour, not counting our efforts a failure, but a discovery about ourselves. The difficult decision is always at what point to call halt.

Don’t look back with Regret

This important guidepost applies not only to giving up a sought-after skill, but also to the passing of any phase in our life.

When I left Currie Hall at the beginning of 1987, several people said to me ‘After the strength of the commitment you had to Currie Hall, surely you will miss it?’ My answer was ‘No.’ Then, when I retired completely, early in 1993, people said: ‘Surely you regret coming to the end of your career?’ Again, my answer was ‘No. Not in the slightest.’

It was simply the closing of one door and the opening of another that would give me new opportunities - some of which I may not have as yet even glimpsed. Moving on to new adventures, whilst valuing and learning from the old, is simply a matter of adopting a positive attitude to all the experiences that life can offer.

¹¹⁰ See page 313 ¹¹¹ See page 353

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REAL FREEDOM NEEDS DISCIPLINE DON’T LOOK BACK WITH REGRET LIVE IN THE NOW

In 1996 I received a letter from a past student who had recently turned forty. He wrote:

It must be scary for people of my age to visualise that the past good times now belong to the past.

I knew the student very well, so replied:

‘It is fruitless to try to repeat the past good times, as any attempt to do so is to live with constant regret. But, I have not found it scary. If you let the past go, but value it for what it was: a vital part of your experience, then you can concentrate on gaining the most from the present, which will ensure that you gain the most from the future.

‘When I was young, like all young men, the hormones ran strongly through me and I had urgent and powerful sexual drives. Satisfying those drives was very important to me and gave me not only some peak experiences but also some great frustrations. Now, at a much later age, the hormones no longer surge through me with the same intensity. If I had always placed great emphasis on sexual gratification for its own sake, then I would probably regret the passing of its intensity. Do I? No I don't! It was a vehicle that once helped me foster close emotional relationships. As the years have passed, Kay and I have shared more and more of our lives, and so have grown in our mutual emotional security. We have a rock solid foundation of trust that we now realise gives us both great pleasure and happiness. Intensity of sexual experience was important at an earlier age; now, the deep satisfaction of a strong bonding with another person and the mutual caring between people, is recognised as an even greater pleasure.

‘A boy of seventeen when he first gains his drivers' licence will do "wheelies" in the street and "burn" his tyres with screeching take-offs. When he is twenty-seven, he will no longer do this. He "has been there, done that", and his former excitement has been replaced by something more appropriate to his age. Does he regret that he no longer does "wheelies"? I doubt it. He remembers the period probably with pleasure, and possibly with a little pain if he were involved in an accident at the time. But he does not look back with regret. The "wheelies" were part of the experiences that made him what he is today; they are a part of the rich fabric that is his life.’

In the 1960s and 1970s Betty Friedan was a very influential American woman espousing the feminine cause and empowering women to take their place beside men as equals. In 1992, in her seventies, she published a book, The Fountain of Age in which she pointed out that, just as many years ago men used myths about women to keep women “in their place”, so, too, there were now myths about the inadequacy of old age, which deny the old their rightful place and push them to one side as discarded and on the rubbish heap, waiting to die but, while waiting, getting in the way of youth.

In her new book she dispelled these ideas: Everyone glorifies youth, she wrote. Magazines show no one over thirty. The ideal is to be a woman of twenty, and the aim of life is to preserve that youthfulness in the face of the ageing process. This, she said, was nonsense: As one grows older, there is the opportunity to fully realise oneself, to become independent of criticism, and to enjoy the freedom that this confers. It is a mistake to look back on lost youth with regret. It is right to live life as fully as one can in the present, utilising the accumulation of wisdom that experience has brought.

I totally agree with this. I note that there is some small print beneath the guidepost that says

Live in the Now, but learn from the past

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In my association with MALA, our school for Seniors¹¹², I have encountered many older people, some in their eighties. I met an eighty-five year old man who was full of life, had a boyish twinkle in his eye, and was full of humour. He had a few physical disabilities, but what of it? He retained a zest for life that was refreshing to see. If someone said to him, ‘What is it like, to be old?’ he would reply: ‘Old? Old age? What’s that? I’ve still got a great deal of living to do.’ I think it is wonderful when an old person, full of the experience of life, can nonetheless maintain a youthful outlook. It is only a pity when a person has reached mature years but never learnt how to accept personal responsibility for his life and for those around him. Then, I feel sad that they have never truly “grown up”.

Growing up by accepting responsibility while retaining a youthful outlook, a natural curiosity, a committed approach to life and the desire to do something worth doing is a great gift. We should encourage it in ourselves and in others. This brings me to the next group of guideposts:

Trust other people

There is a very sad, and rather sick story of the little boy who climbed on to the roof of his house and then was too afraid to jump down. His father tried to coax him, finally holding out his arms, urging his son to jump. ‘Don’t worry,’ said the father, ‘I will catch you.’ So the boy plucked up courage and jumped, whereupon the father folded his arms and let the boy fall to the ground, badly shaken. ‘There,’ said the father, ‘let that be a lesson to you, my son. Trust no one in this life, not even your own father.’

This is an apocryphal tale but many people have been brought up - or their experience has told them to trust no one, at least not until their trustworthiness has been proved. This is a great pity.

My parents, having faced disappointments in life had the motto: Expect nothing and you will not be disappointed. Dad often said to me:

If you do a kindness for someone, they are surprised, and thank you; If you do them a second kindness, they thank you, but are no longer surprised; The third time, they abuse you for not doing it.

I found this a cynical attitude to life, and I have steadfastly refused to be a cynic, but we can all recognise the situation. However, I remember the time that I failed an examination and Professor

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Weatherburn trusted me . I remember how his faith in me caused me to grow, and how I learnt an important lesson. I then decided that I would trust people, and that I would believe in them. Time and again, when working with young people in later life, I discovered that by adopting a positive stance, by assuming the best motives, by trusting them, and by believing what they said, they were better able to overcome personal limitations, and move forward to greater self-fulfilment. When I placed trust in them, they rose to the occasion, placed trust in me, and we started to communicate with sincerity and

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honesty .

Occasionally someone would let me down, but it was very rare. I believe that we should all build trust with others, because this is the very basis of sincerity, honesty and community. To give and receive the gift of trust, is one of the greatest gifts we can bestow on each other. It is the lubricant that facilitates honest communication because it makes us feel safe.

¹¹² See pages 536 - 540 ¹¹³ See page 98 ¹¹⁴ See page 252 regarding my experience as Sub-Dean and page 322 when I was in Currie

Hall

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TRUST OTHERS MAINTAIN YOUR INTEGRITY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOURSELF

Maintain Personal Integrity Be honest and truthful

This guidepost is closely related to the last as an important part of trust depends on personal integrity. If someone cannot believe what you say, then they cannot trust you. So honesty and truthfulness are a part of integrity. But the word means more than this: it implies a state of being whole, complete and undivided. If one seeks unity within oneself and unity with others - which I regard as a central aim in life - then honesty and truthfulness are the starting points. I have found that openness with others and a lack of deceit brings great personal rewards, even though it is tempting at times to be dishonest or untruthful. Perhaps I was fortunate in that my parents were very honest and truthful: these were the

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standards held before me and to which I aspired .

Not that it is always easy or possible to be completely truthful. When we are afraid of the opinions of others; when we have not yet reached the point of unreservedly accepting ourselves as “an OK person”, we are tempted to be deceitful to get out of a sticky situation or to gain an advantage. Unfortunately, while this may give an imagined temporary advantage or solution to a problem, it is only temporary. If one starts on the path of coping with life, its fears and difficulties by deception and a lack of honesty, it soon becomes the standard way of trying to cope with problems. It seems the easy way out but, initially, we feel bad that we have indulged in the practice, as we become divided within ourselves, and these feelings often confirm for us that we are “not OK”. If the habit becomes ingrained, we bury these bad feelings deep inside ourselves because they are too painful.

My dictionary tells me that honesty implies fairness and straightforwardness of conduct, sincerity and a refusal to lie, steal, or deceive in any way. When we are dishonest we become self-centred, disregarding the needs and rights of others. We lose sight of the Golden Rule, all for the sake of apparent personal, short-term advantage. Real communication breaks down and we cease to care about others. Our care is for ourselves, but in failing to love others, we cease to love ourselves.

An important element in any relationship is trust. If we trust another implicitly, and they trust us, then each bestows much freedom on the other. Deception and a lack of honesty are very difficult to preserve. When this lack is discovered, trust is shattered and relationships fall apart. Much real love and forgiveness is needed to rebuild the bridge of trust. Few things are as important as developing the quality of sincerity, having an honesty of mind and a freedom from hypocrisy.

Be Responsible: Never blame others

This guidepost does not appear until we are some way down the track. It contains few words, but its

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command is daunting. Eric Berne wrote an entertaining book on the psychology of human relationships titled Games People Play, which was a popular example of his main book Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy.

In it he described an oft-played game that he called Why don’t You - Yes But. A typical example of the game goes like this:

¹¹⁵ See pages 51 & 109 for my early comments; Also see page 253 where, in the 1960s, I set out my private guideposts to living.

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See footnote 84 on page 618. Eric Berne was the founder of Transactional Analysis

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A: ‘My dog is always running out into the street and annoying motorists.’

B: ‘Then Why don’t you keep him constrained to your back yard?’

A: ‘I would, but there are some pickets off the fence and he gets out.’

B: ‘Then why don’t you just hammer the pickets back on again?’

A: ‘I would but my son-in-law has borrowed my hammer.’

B: ‘Then why don’t you get it back from him?’

A: ‘I would, but I think he’s lost it.’

B: ‘Then why don’t you. . .’

C: ‘I would but. . . ‘

. . . And so on.

While there are doubtless many underlying motives in playing this game, such as posing as the helpless person, and having the satisfaction of rejecting every solution that is offered, it also displays a basic lack of accepting responsibility for oneself and a desire to blame things outside ourselves.

Sometimes we reluctantly accept responsibility that is imposed on us. I remember being somewhat uneasy when, at the age of seven, my mother said that I had reached the age of reason, knew right from

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wrong, and was now responsible for what I did . I did not feel very comfortable about that. Then I remember the contrast between the Australian and Asian students when I went to Currie Hall in 1967. To the Asian, the Australians seemed empty-headed with no sense of responsibility. Ingrained in them, often through the conditioning of their society, was a deep respect for their parents and a sense of

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responsibility to them . Neither of these senses of responsibility were personally held convictions.

As a young man my sense of responsibility was still a response to an externally imposed precept. Maybe I acted “responsibly” because I feared the criticism of others if I did not. It took me many years to realise that no matter what had happened to me in early life, the future was under my control:

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I, and I alone, was responsible for the way in which I allowed my life to develop .

It was not until I was in my mid-thirties that I was influenced by existential thought. When I realised that responsibility was something that we all faced, but feared to accept; When I saw that at every moment in life we were free to choose our action but could never be sure that we would choose well; When I finally understood that nonetheless making a decision, and then accepting and living with the consequences, caused me to grow as a person, I at last internalised the idea that self-responsibility was

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part of what life was about .

Freedom and responsibility go hand-in-hand; freedom is freedom to be responsible, not to be irresponsible. When we conform or submit to external authority we give up part of our wholeness. believe this is true in many areas. As long as we need a “security blanket” and depend on someone else or on some institution to protect us, to make us feel safe, or to give us a tick of approval, we are

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not a fully whole, or integrated person .

¹¹⁷ See page 43

¹¹⁸ See page 328

¹¹⁹See page 182

¹²⁰ See pages 268 and 253

¹²¹ I wrote on page 611: Someone who adheres to a dogma without a background of experienced knowledge, is blind to the truth. The dogma is simply a prop. See also the story of the Archbishop and his son on page 312

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BE RESPONSIBLE DON’T BLAME OTHERS BE REASONABLE MASTER YOUR ANGER

Being fully responsible is scary, but blaming others for our situation is totally non-productive. It deprives us of being fully human, and it drives a wedge between ourselves and others. It obstructs our desire for unity with others and ourselves.

Sure, some other people, limited in their own development by various factors, may act inappropriately. Their action may damage us. Maybe we have little control over this, but it is not what happens to us that matters, it is the attitude we take to what happens to us. For example, if we feel that someone has injured us, or slighted us, we may respond with harsh words. The confrontation is very damaging to us. We feel bad about the situation and perhaps bad about the words we spoke in the emotional heat of the moment. The person whom we damage by blaming others is ourself.

Of course, it is inevitable that we will have a difference of opinion and sometimes arguments with others. To relate to others we must communicate. Without communication we do not understand, and so cannot love. But communication is very difficult. Even in trivial, non-confrontational matters I am sometimes a very bad communicator. Sometimes I choose one word, with an intended meaning, while my listener puts an unintended meaning on it. So, I am misunderstood. Sorting out the intended communication is not always easy, especially if the words are emotionally charged.

Holding a different opinion to someone else is natural and part of what living is about, but it need not lead to heated argument provided we hold a genuine and deep respect for the other person and recognise their right to feel different. Our ability to accept different attitudes in others is closely related to our own inner feelings of self-confidence. When we are under-confident we don't like to admit that we might be wrong. An attack on something we say may be emotionally experienced as an attack on our person. Only when we are sure of ourselves, and know that we have an inner strength, can we take a difference of opinion as what it really is, a difference in attitude, and an attempt to communicate.

Be reasonable: Don’t be stubborn Anger rarely helps

This guidepost follows from the last. We must remember that we are finite and frail. No matter how strongly we hold a view, we must remember that we may be mistaken. If we are uncertain of ourselves we may find it necessary to be stubborn and insist on our own point of view. If we admit that we are wrong, we feel that we are decreased in stature. However, when we know ourselves well and accept ourselves, we rarely need to hold firmly to our own viewpoint and insist that others are wrong.

While we remain self-centred, we find it hard to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and understand where they are coming from, and why they feel as they do. And yet it is important that we develop the skill of doing so. From their background, their own attitude may be as reasonable as ours. Perhaps we can simply accept their point of view, although different from our own, or amicably agree to differ.

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In May, 1992, the Dalai Lama visited Perth and over 10,000 people attended a talk that he gave. vividly remember one statement made by this gentle man:

¹²² The Dalai Lama is the Buddhist spiritual leader of Tibetans, and is regarded by them as a God. When a Dalai Lama dies, the priests search the country for his reincarnation, and the present Dalai Lama was found in this way, as a small child. I first become aware of the Dalai Lama years ago when I read the story of a German mountaineer who climbed Annapurna, one of the tallest peaks in the Himalayas. The author encountered the Dalai Lama who was then fourteen years of age. When the Chinese annexed Tibet, the Dalai Lama was forced to flee. Today he resides with a following in India, but has little hope of recovering Tibet from the rule of the Chinese.

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The most important principle in life is to show compassion to others and not to be subject to anger. Anger is destructive. It does not hurt your opponent. It only hurts you. Have you noticed how people remain calm in an argument while they can produce logical statements to support their view? It is only when they run out of logic that they turn to anger.

Of course, he is right, but how many of us can live a life of compassion?

It is often said that man is motivated by an aggressive drive which originally had significant survival value, and that society, as it developed, had to find ways to externally impose restraints to inhibit that aggression. Maybe our competitive sense feeds on our natural aggression; maybe a small competitive sense is useful in helping us to succeed, but is not good when our aim is to beat others at all costs.

Most of us feel a build up of anger - that strong feeling of displeasure and antagonism - at some stage in our lives. Psychologists tell us that it is not good to bottle this up inside ourselves, until it grows and grows to a point where it may erupt as rage, resulting in a complete loss of self-control from the violence of our emotions. It is better, they say, to show our anger before it becomes too great. This is like taking the cork out of a bottle that has internal pressure, so that the pressure escapes before it bursts the bottle and causes damage not only to itself but to anything nearby.

Emotional anger may be helpful if we can let off steam in a gentle way before it becomes damaging. However, it almost always divides us: it puts us at war with ourselves because it is an unpleasant emotion in itself.

As I have walked along the path of life and slowly achieved a greater sense of unity within myself and with others, I have discovered that there is rarely need for anger. To let off steam before anger becomes too great may be good, but surely it is better not to experience the anger in the first place. Today, anger is almost a foreign experience for me. Once I understood myself, once I tried putting myself in the shoes of the other, once I understood that most people live as best they can, but differ in the extent to which they have achieved knowledge of themselves, I found it unnecessary to feel anger. I feel concern at injustice and wrong-doing, but not anger. I have found that anger is almost always hurtful to myself and others and that it does not solve a problem. Because it usually causes an emotional, irrational outburst, it deepens the problem and does not cure it.

Dispel Anger and Forgive others

When we look at the world today, we see many instances of hatred between groups. In recent years,

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no love has been lost between the Croatians and the Serbs . In 1992 I watched a television program in which the interviewer talked with many students from the Cabramatta High School in New South Wales. Students at this school came from over seventy different nationalities. Some had been born in Australia; others were born overseas, or their parents had migrated to Australia, or entered as refugees. Many had experienced racial prejudice springing from the problems of their home country. One Croatian boy said that he would never mix with Serbs. The interviewer asked him to shake hands with a Serbian girl in the audience. They both refused, although they had never previously met. While one could understand the parents finding it impossible to forgive those at whose hands they had suffered loss, or been subject to atrocities, surely it should be different for the children who had come to a new country to start a new life? But no. The parents were fiercely loyal to their country of origin and felt hatred towards those who had treated them badly. They communicated this to their children from an early age, so that the children grew up with the same hatreds and prejudices.

¹²³ See page 607

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ANGER & FORGIVENESS HIDE YOUR VIRTUES, DISPLAY YOUR WEAKNESSES

There was one exception to this. A young Chinese girl said that her mother had been severely mistreated by the Japanese, and so would hate the Japanese always. However, the mother had impressed on her daughter that she should not hate the Japanese. The young girl belonged to a different generation and was growing up with Japanese of a different generation. The mother had taught her daughter that the problems of parents should not be visited on the children, so brought up her family to respect all people equally.

I can understand how difficult it is for anyone, who has been badly hurt by another, to find it in their heart to forgive. I remember how, when I told my father that I had never hated anyone, he simply

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responded: Then you have never been hurt enough . He held his hurt within himself, but would never buy a Japanese car or associate with anything Japanese, but he did not pass his feelings on to me. Perhaps it is true: I have never been hurt enough by any group, or individual, to find it impossible to forgive. Therefore, I am unqualified to comment. However, Stan Arneil¹²⁵ suffered badly, learnt from the experience, and turned it to positive use: in hindsight, he thought that he was very privileged to have gained an important insight into life through his suffering.

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And yet the problems between racial groups persist . Antagonism in Ireland has existed for decade after decade with no one willing to forgive and forget, with no one willing to act on the greater principle that, in terms of Gandhi’s book, All men are brothers. We tear ourselves apart in hurtful actions between individuals, neither party being willing to forgive. Perhaps the problem is not solved by only one party forgiving, because then they may see themselves as the vanquished, while the victor lords it over them. Perhaps the solution requires that neither party blames the other for the state they are in. No one should say ‘It’s all your fault.’ Only when they can truly say ‘It’s everyone’s fault’, accept the fact that hurt and damage has been done, and then seek mutual forgiveness, that we can overcome the problem. That is easy to say, but so hard to achieve because few of us have gained the understanding and acceptance of ourselves that is necessary before we can take the first step.

Hide your virtues Disclose your weaknesses

Many tips on how to live came to me during my mid- to late-thirties¹²⁷; this guidepost was one of them. It proclaimed that I should hide my virtues and disclose my weaknesses. This seemed strange advice when I first encountered it. Usually, we like to receive accolades, are apt to be proud of our achievements and have a desire to proclaim them so people will think well of us, while we do not want others to be aware of our shortcomings. Yet, eventually, I found that this advice made good sense, although it was not easy to practise.

If we do a good act towards another, we should not go around with the attitude “look how good I am.” Bragging is not an endearing virtue. If our motive in doing the “good” act is to have praise heaped on us, and to be well thought of, then the act is not good in itself. All our acts should be done simply because they are worth doing, without thought of reward. This, I have found, is one of the great principles of living: Act for no other reason than that it is worthwhile. Then keep the act quietly to yourself. This is not always possible, but it does contribute greatly to our sense of well-being, and to our sense of wholeness and integrity.

¹²⁴ See page 615

¹²⁵ See page 613

¹²⁶ See page 607

¹²⁷ See comments on “Your are your secrets” on page 265 and my comments on self-disclosure on pages 274 - 277

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I am reminded of the story of the disciple sitting at the feet of the wise and good guru, who had been espousing the virtue of rising above our baser instincts so that we never sought praise or recognition for our virtuous practices. The disciple proclaimed, ‘Oh my guru, I cannot be like you, I give way to all my baser feelings, while you always rise above them..’ The story concludes with the simple words: ‘To which the guru smiled.’ The guru was not above being receptive to praise! We are all human, and often fall short of our aspirations.

As discussed on page 265, while it is desirable to keep our good acts to ourselves, conversely, if we have done something of which we are ashamed, the knowledge of this destroys our internal unity because it engenders a sense of guilt. Only by revealing our bad act to someone who is significant in our life can we resolve its negative influence upon us.. I found that self-disclosure was a very scary and difficult thing to do. However, I eventually found immense benefit in following the advice, and now try not to keep bad acts hidden within myself.

I have always found that if I do something without counting the cost, simply because it is worth doing, and without asking for, or expecting reward, nonetheless, reward always comes to me in some form. It may be that I simply experience a growth of self-esteem and self-confidence; it may be that through my actions I gain greater insight into myself, and increase my sense of completeness and fulfilment. Such rewards, once experienced, are of far greater value than other more tangible rewards.

This experience also threw light on another oft-heard guidepost:

The world does not owe you a living.

How often have we heard this. How often have we seen people acting as though the world does owe them a living. They are unmindful of the admonition that:

It is not what the world can do for you that counts, but what you can do for the world.

Once we recognise that we are completely responsible for ourselves and that what we make of ourselves and our lives depends on us and on us alone, this admonition starts to make profound sense. Our proper role as human beings is to lead an active life, participating in life. Our task is to gain from life everything we can that will cause us to grow as people, to enjoy our experiences and to reach a rich fruition.

As small children we naturally depend on our parents and others to provide for us but, as we grow older and seek independence, we realise that our task is to depend on, and to provide for ourselves. When we expect others to provide for us, we do not grow. The world has achieved what it has through the accumulated contributions of many millions of people throughout the ages. We are unique and, during our brief spell in this world, have the opportunity to add to that contribution. Our personal contribution may not be earth-shattering, but in its own sphere it is significant.

If we wish to grow and reach a sense of fulfilment and completeness, our thoughts should not start with ‘They ought to. . .’ That makes us passive absorbers of the efforts of others. No, we should engender in our attitude the thought ‘What can I do. . .’ Then we become active. If something needs changing or developing, then say to yourself, ‘How can I help make that happen?’. When someone asks you to contribute to doing the task, then say ‘Yes’ if it is within your capacity, and above all, don’t grumble about what has been imposed on you. Either accept a role willingly, or don’t accept it at all. And do not count the cost. That way, you grow.

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THE WORLD DOES NOT OWE YOU A LIVING MY THREE CRITICS

While I have been writing the section on ‘how to live’¹²⁸, three imaginary critics have been my constant companions, peering over my shoulder. I have become more and more conscious of them, and now realise that I can constrain them no longer.

Jason is a twenty-year old blond, sun-tanned surfie¹²⁹, a fine physical specimen of young manhood. ‘Hey, Man!’ he says, ‘Get real! What are you, a preacher, or something? Don’t you know that life is for living - so let’s have none of this responsibility or do-gooder stuff. That’s not cool: that’s for oldies who are past it. It’s just not like that. You’ve got to suck out of life all that you can, while you can. Man, when I’m out there, on top of a big wave that’s curling and breaking, it can’t get much more real than that: the adrenaline is pumping, and I don’t have a care in the world. That’s when I’m fully alive. It’s me against nature. Life is for fun, for enjoying myself at a rave party, for getting pissed¹³⁰, and maybe chatting up a chic with the hope of shacking up with her for the night. And when I do, that’s something again. That’s cool, I can tell you.’

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I guess that Jason is still in the fourth age , and is gripped by a hedonist philosophy - which proclaims that pleasure is the chief good in life. Of course, he has a point: what I have written may seem all very serious and dull, although not intended. While I have written about enthusiasm, about encouraging curiosity and interest in everything, perhaps I have not emphasised sufficiently the value of spontaneity, of doing something on the spur of the moment, without always thinking of the consequences. It’s natural for a person like Jason to explore life, not to be introspective, and to take risks. So I am not perturbed by his reaction. I notice, by the way, that he is very good on his surfboard, and know that you don’t get that good without much practice and self-discipline to gain the skill. Because he enjoyed the act of mastering the skill, he threw himself into it, unconscious of the effort required. That’s how we should approach most things.

When I was at Currie Hall I remember many young men who came up to the University with Jason’s outlook on life. They lived it up, got drunk, went to parties and had a wild time. More often than not, those same students, three years later, had a completely different outlook. They had “been there, done that” and now had moved to the next phase of life. Today they are respected and responsible members of the professional community. A seventeen or eighteen year-old might vehemently advocate free-love with as many partners as possible. Three years later, when he has discovered more about intimacy, he may say that one should not indulge in sex unless there is a sense of commitment between the couple.

-oOo-

My second critic, Debra, is approaching middle age. She has three children from the early teens, down to five years. The children are always demanding, and most of the time she feels worn out. She no longer sees eye-to-eye with her husband, Tom, and there is constant bickering. ‘I’ve been reading what you have written,’ she starts, ‘and you are far too simplistic. You write: trust other people, never blame others, don’t be stubborn, don’t experience anger, and forgive others. It’s just not that simple. I ask you, how can you trust people when you’ve been let down, so many times? I just can’t do it.’

¹²⁸ Pages 608 - 640

¹²⁹ One who spends much time at the beach riding the crest of waves to the shoreline on a surfboard and who regards it as a way of life

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A vulgar expression used by the young for getting drunk.

¹³¹ See page 609

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‘Tom and I started off happily together but, as the years have passed, we have come to realise that we have very different personalities. He always wants his way, but says that I’m the stubborn one. So we fight, then we get angry, and it gets out of hand. How can I forgive him when he has hurt me so many times? He probably feels the same about me, because when you’re angry you say things you don’t mean. I tell you, you are not realistic.

‘And then you say, “develop your talents.” Ever since I married I’ve been at the beck and call of my husband and children. Doing things to support him in his work, feeding the kids, looking after them, getting them to school, sorting out their squabbles. Where has there been any time for me? How can I possibly develop my talents when I have no time for myself, and then, if I do find some time, I am too worn out to do anything with it. Life’s just not fair - particularly to women.’

There are many people in this world, like Debra, caught up in difficult life-problems, and maybe I am being over simplistic. If these problems were easily solved, we would not have so many unhappy people, so many divorces and the like in this world. But we do have them, so the world is not a simple place in which to live.

No one can show another how to live; it has to be discovered for oneself. At the outset I wrote that, what I observed along the road of life as seeming useful to me, might not be of use to someone else. Each person must find their own way of solving their problems, and some people may be faced with much more difficult problems than others. I have simply been fortunate. However, although difficult to apply, I believe that most of the guideposts I have noted, are at least pointers to the right way to go. It would be delightful if we could all be masters of ourselves. However, generally we are not, and the way ahead to a more satisfactory life becomes clouded and confused with many emotional issues.

-oOo-

George, my third critic, is a bully. In his mid-fifties he has spent all his life in the hard-headed world of international commerce. He has made a great success of it in material terms, but has developed a reputation for using bull-dozer tactics to get what he wants. In this he has been successful.

He looks me in the eye, and starts aggressively:

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‘I’ve been watching what you write - and it’s nothing but a load of crap . It’s dog eat dog our there. None of this mamby-pamby nonsense about trust and consideration, thank you very much . Sure, we use those words in our rhetoric, but we don’t for one moment believe them: ruthless competition is the name of the game. It was like that yesterday, it’s like it today, and it will be like that tomorrow. The world belongs to the cunning, to the manipulators and to the powerful. Everyone else is simply the cannon-fodder. That’s the real world. Cain killed Abel, and that’s been going on since the year dot. If you don’t believe me, try stepping out of your ivory tower into the real world, and see how quickly you get shot down. You wouldn’t last a minute. I know, because I’ve had to survive in the real world, and the only way to survive is to play the game their way. So, if you want to write about how to live, you must be in the real cut-throat world as your starting point.’

I have no answer to George. I think he exaggerates since, even in his world, finer feelings sometimes prevail. However, he typifies that which causes me greatest concern for the future: People like George controlling giant multinational companies, lacking in all human concern, and whose only regard is for the growth of their own and their company’s power and control of the market. Someone said that the problem is that you can’t bring contentment and happiness into the economic equation. But I remain an optimist: Maybe, in future, we can, and humanistic values will again emerge triumphant.

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A very vulgar, but widely used term to signify nonsense or rubbish.

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MY THREE CRITICS THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN

III The future belongs to my immediate descendants and to their descendants. I have written little about our obligations to children, but they are many. There is a little book of profound wisdom by Kahil

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Gibran called The Prophet . In a section on children, he wrote:

And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, Speak to us of Children.

And he said:

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you, but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies, but not their souls For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.

The Archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the Archer's hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so also he loves the bow that is stable.

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Gibran was born near Mount Lebanon in 1883, and died in 1931. The Prophet was written in 1923 and first published in Britain in 1926, since when it has gone through one edition after another, and is still immensely popular.

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We all know that children learn not from what we say but from what we do. I am impressed by the oft-quoted words of Dorothy Law Nolte:

Children learn what they live

If a child lives with criticism, He learns to condemn.

If a child lives with hostility, He learns to fight.

If a child lives with ridicule, He learns to be shy.

If a child lives with shame, He learns to feel guilty.

If a child lives with tolerance, He learns to be patient.

If a child lives with encouragement, He learns confidence.

If a child lives with praise, He learns to appreciate.

If a child lives with fairness, He learns justice.

If a child lives with security, He learns to have faith.

If a child lives with approval, He learns to like himself.

If a child lives with acceptance and Friendship, He learns to find love in the world.

Let us heed these words of wisdom and so help our children, and their children, to benefit positively from our own experience of life, and from the experience of life that we pass on to them.

Finally, a comment about the pot of gold:

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CHILDREN THE POT OF GOLD